Wang Kaew Hotel Phitsanulok

... is a handful. She is not keen on being ridden, but I have ridden her bareback (it's the only way to go!!) a few times, normally with one of the mahouts leading her, but once without. Riding an elephant bareback, sitting above the front legs, is a weird, scary but awesome thing to do. The scary part comes when you realise you have absolutely no real control of the elephant, and nothing to hold onto except the ears (more of which later). Walking with ...

We arrived after one hell of mammoth journey we would wish upon anyone. It was 5 hours on a train, standing next to the toilets. We had to have happened to head a little further North just as most of the Southern Thai population were traveling up to Chang Mai for some religious festival. It was packed, over-crowded and we had extra, unnecessary people on too. These were people trying to sell food and drinks trudging and barging up and ...

... husband and silly enough to think he was the boss) who thrust an English menu before us. We sat but only after ordering and helping ourselves to a beer from the fridge (I didn't say we weren't looking for beer just that it wasn't essential). It is curious how we are changing our eating and sleeping habits. We now need to find a snack, usually noodles in some form, by mid afternoon and then hide for an hour or two from the broiling sun. As dusk approaches we join the rest of Thailand in ...

... some tables and chairs. A illuminated pub emerged in front of me. There I downed a couple of beers in company of the drunk bartender, a very energetic Thai that vividly wanted to explain things to me (only in Thai), 67 year old Brit with his twenty-something year old Thai boyfriend and the letter's brother. It was weird, it was great. I missed a thing I wanted to see just for the name but it was too far out of my ...

... temples, simply put, shed loads of temples! Just what we like. We got there and saw that prepartions we taking place for the beginning of the Loi Krathong, a festival celebrated in Northern Thailand, where hundreds of lanterns are sent floating up into the sky and bobbing down the rivers. We headed straight out to the temples furthest away, which were stunning. A large Buddha standing on top of a hill, looking down on the view of the city in the distance. And some gorgeous ...

... for which you pay an absolute bloody FORTUNE, but anyway... don't get me started!<br><br>We arrived in Phitsanulok a bit late at about 3pm, found our 'hotel', which cost an OUTRAGEOUS 150 Bahts per night... which is the princely sum of about GBP 2.50 or US $5!<br><br>We thought we'd found a real bargain, but sadly you normally get what you ...

... vegetables (morning glories) from a street food/circus act. Next day we toured the Sukhothai ruins an hour's bus ride away. It's the biggest set of ruins in Thailand. We rented bikes (for around 60 cents) and chugged around from temple to temple. It used to be a thriving city that predated Ankor Wat in Cambodia as the cultural and political center of the region 800+ years ago. We took a zillion pictures and got a great workout in the bargain.

... mudra, glowed softly in the early morning light as roosters crowed in the distance, and the plunking mellow tones of a traditional wooden xylophone, tuned to an unfamiliar scale, carried through the warm air. Later we take photos of bright pink water lilies reflecting on the surface of the pond next to Wat Mahathat, the Royal Temple. The wat is quiet still, free from the crowd of tourists that will arrive later, and the ...

... our bags off we headed right back out the door to go find some Singha beers. We went to the Night Bazzar here and were pleasantly suprised that the people here are much less pushy than in Chiang Mai and that we were basically the only white people around for miles. We finally stopped in a bar that was blasting horrible thai pop, where we ordered a couple beers and some Tom Yung Lum soup (prawns ...

... later then most of Angkor, many of the temples were originally Buddhist, rather then initially Hindu and eventually Buddhist. Big, small, standing, sitting, reclining, you name it. So I guess that's all from Sukhothai. Tomorrow I'll get a bus to Bangkok and spend a few days there, before I return to Hong Kong, where I have my work cut out for me going back and adding my pictures!